A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, he is a former Peace Corps volunteer, a screenwriter, and a journalist as well as a book, magazine, and newspaper editor including The Los Angeles Times, California magazine (editor in chief), Esquire, Harcourt Trade Publishers, Bantam Books, and Simon & Schuster.

He is best known for what he is not known for: he has ghostwritten more than thirty books for a diverse group of people, including theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, former Yahoo! Chief Solutions Officer Tim Sanders, and Mark Liponis, the medical director of Canyon Ranch Resorts. Six of these books have been national bestsellers.

He has also published several titles under his own name, including a Washington Post number one bestseller, The Bush Survival Bible. He lives in New York City, from where he blogs regularly for the Huffington Post.

An avid watch collector, he appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning (October 29, 2006) discussing his book, The Watch the definitive book of men's wristwatches.